Politics in Peru

Military mutters

The grievances of a humbled army

THE retired admiral is seething: “I don't know when we went from being acclaimed as national heroes to being in the dock.” Peru's armed forces were once hailed for having crushed terrorism. The downfall of Alberto Fujimori, the president from 1990-2000, laid bare their involvement in huge kickbacks on arms purchases, in human-rights abuses and even electoral fraud. But now the army reckons the pendulum has swung too far.

After Mr Fujimori's fall, a caretaker government purged the high command and officers linked to Vladimiro Montesinos, his intelligence chief. A dozen generals are in jail, facing corruption charges. Alejandro Toledo, who was elected president in 2001, wants to bring the armed forces under tight civilian control. His government aims to slim the officer corps, and make it more professional and accountable (the auditor-general would check the military books). But reform is stirring up unrest.

In December, in what his military critics called a “sadistic” vendetta, the defence minister sent 420 officers into retirement. That is more than usual, but needed (and will be each year until 2006) to give a top-heavy force a conventional pyramid profile. The defence budget has been slashed too, by almost 20%. By the end of last year, soldiers were being sent home at weekends for lack of rations, and money for maintenance had run out. The government responded with one-off payments to plug the gap, and authorised the selling of redundant defence-ministry properties.

Mr Toledo has also opened the door to the reckoning the armed forces never faced under Mr Fujimori for abuses in the crushing of terrorism in the 1980s and 1990s. A Truth Commission is looking at thousands of “disappearances”, and prosecutors are investigating several cases where soldiers executed guerrilla prisoners. Last week, in a controversial ruling, Peru's Supreme Court struck down some provisions of Mr Fujimori's anti-terrorist law. This will allow around 800 prisoners from the Shining Path terrorist group, including Abimael Guzmán, its notorious leader, who were convicted in military tribunals to demand retrials by civilian courts. But they will remain in jail meanwhile.

Ordinary Peruvians still see Mr Fujimori's crushing of terrorism as a triumph, and do not quibble about the methods used. Faced with a public outcry when commandos who had rescued 71 hostages after a siege at the Japanese ambassador's residence in 1997 were accused of executing their rebel captors in cold blood, Mr Toledo's government was happy to see the case sent to a military court.

Supporters of Mr Fujimori accuse the government of being soft on terrorism while neglecting the army. Certainly, Shining Path's tiny rump stirred into life last year, but mainly with peaceful propagandising. There are reports, too, of incursions by FARC guerrillas from Colombia. The government has ordered the army to set up five new bases in hot spots. But grumbling of cash shortages, and disgruntled by the digging up of the past, commanders have been reluctant to patrol. Such grievances are real. But so is Peru's need to cut an overmighty army down to size.